


Romance Shit With Ransom & Holster

by MWI



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Awkwardness, Bromance to Romance, Ensemble Cast, Gen, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Trans Female Character, Valentine’s Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 06:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3347744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MWI/pseuds/MWI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On four very special episodes of 'Hockey Shit with Ransom & Holster,' everyone’s favorite dynamite d-men turn to the residents of Samwell University for help puzzling out love, friendship, and the everlasting question of what being “Ransom & Holster” means to Justin Oluransi and Adam Birkholtz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bromance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theplacewhere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theplacewhere/gifts).



> Hey, just wanted to give you guys a heads-up that nonstandard pronouns are used for a character in this fic; those pronouns are the Elverson set listed in [this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun), fifth from the top, so I recommend that chart if you're unused to seeing Elverson pronouns and don't know what part of speech they're working as!

On Valentine’s Eve’s Eve, an adored holiday among the denizens of the Samwell Shark Haus, the kitchen is jam-packed with amateur chefs that aren’t making nearly as much candy as they’re dropping on the floor.

While they’ve been working on learning how to sort-of bake, the residents have taken it upon themselves to share stories of particularly disastrous Valentine’s Days from years prior, and the trend continues when they all file out into the living area for a break from the scorching kitchen air.

Ransom and Holster, the dynamic duo, take it upon themselves to educate all of their Hausmates about the fine intricacies of bromance, in the spirit of the season.

“So you see,” Ransom says, gesturing at their trusty whiteboard, “Me and Holtzy have a _bromance_. Bros for life.”

“Isn’t that just dating?” Dex asks. His bright eyes are narrowed, fixed intensely on his educational upperclassmen.

Both of them laugh, Holster’s a bit louder and Ransom’s a bit deeper.

“No, man," Ransom says. “Dating is totally different from a bromance.”

“How?”

The question rings in the air.

"Well, duh, we don't do romantic stuff."

"You were holding hands yesterday," Bitty points out. He’s clearly trying not to be part of the conversation, to tuck himself into the same shell he retreats into whenever he’s visibly uncomfortable, but he also looks concerned about how they’re framing the distinction.

"Bro, we hold hands all the time.”

“We’re holding hands right now,” Holster follows up, nodding at the kitchen — in full baking mode, he and Ransom had been a two-man, two-hand pastry machine on their own separate portion of the counter. The maneuver had been dubbed "incredibly unhygienic" by Jack and "surprisingly efficient uh but why" by Bitty, but Holster had reasoned that if Shitty could walk around naked, then he and Ransom could bake fully clothed.

Even Jack had agreed to that.

“I saw you kiss once, or three times, I think, when you were super drunk,” pipes Chowder, who’s elbow-deep in a bag of off-brand chips.

The entire kitchen turns to look at him. All the attention clues Chowder into what he’s said, and the blank stares from Ransom and Holster at the front of the makeshift classroom make him sink down like a student who failed their final exam.

“I didn’t know that was a secret,” he whispers. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“So you _are_ dating.” Dex accuses.

For several long seconds, nobody moves. The empty air in the cramped living room feels stale.

“Oh, Lord, I almost forgot I made pie,” offers Bitty, his smile too obviously forged out of a desire to smooth over the situation. “Chowder, would you help me dish it out?”

Their goalie nods without hesitation and trots after Bitty to the kitchen, glancing back at Dex with braces tugging at his lip. As soon as he’s out of sight, Nursey’s heel deliberately presses down onto Dex’s shoe, accompanied with an equally intentional lean away from his teammate.

Dex has the belated grace to bite his tongue and stay silent.

Unfortunately, that silence stacks onto the awkward emptiness where the lively conversation had been a few minutes ago, and neither Ransom’s nor Holster’s thoughts have settled enough for either of them to say a word.

The one who speaks up is Lardo, her shutter shades perched atop her head like a crown.

“ _Mario Kart_ tournament,” she says, with a sideways glance at Shitty.

“ _Mario Kart_!” Shitty exclaims. Ey’s instantly darting up the stairs with purposeful intent while Lardo starts herding everyone into the living room on some unspoken signal, wordlessly guiding everyone to exactly where they need to be.

Ransom and Holster sit together on the couch. Neither of them look at each other, and when their bodies naturally brush up against each other with the reflexive familiarity of muscle memory, they both freeze up like the fainting goats in the documentary Shitty had forced them to watch.

The startled deer impression contest tapers off when Chowder and Bitty come sweeping in from the kitchen, their hands outstretched with plates of pie like patron saints of baked goods — and Chowder, familiar with the repulsing magnetism that is two people who can’t stand to touch each other, sits directly between Ransom and Holster. Shitty appears a few seconds after the pie and passes off the battered and beer-stained Haus Wii to Dex before wedging emself between Chowder and Ransom.

One arm thrown around Ransom’s shoulder to pull him in for a hug, Shitty points at Jack with a grin. Jack had been halfway to the stairs in a failed escape attempt, but he freezes as soon as Shitty gestures his way.

“Me and Ransom against you and Bits, brah,” ey says, “I’m callin’ you out, let’s do this shit!”

The pie and _Mario Kart_ solution isn’t perfect and definitely doesn’t gloss over everything perfectly — the Haus residents carefully coordinate the teams without speaking a word about what had happened, even though it burns under the surface despite their best efforts — but it takes the edge off. Jack even smiles once, which makes Holster fly straight off of Rainbow Road in sheer amazement.

It’s when they’ve all shuffled off to their respective rooms and dorms that things get a little bit awkward again.

Sharing an attic was supposed to be fun. Ransom and Holster, bros, broing it up, doing brotastic things like sharing beds under the threat of ghosts and watching made-for-TV movies on a dingy hunk of scrap. So a night where they don’t talk, don’t really look at each other while they clamber into their individual levels of the bunk bed, feels strange. This isn’t just something they do. They’re _Ransom and Holster_.

“Bro,” Holster whispers into the darkness. “Rans, bro, you still up?”

His eyes wide open and his breath twisted around vivid memories of their teammates’ disbelieving stares, Ransom doesn’t say a word. Not even when, long after Holster has started snoring a hole in the ozone layer, Ransom hears faint strains of Elton John’s _Don’t Go Breaking My Heart_ from wherever the ghosts-who-aren't-real are deciding to haunt him from now.

(If he tears up a little bit when the song is wailing _you put the light in my life_ , nobody needs to know.)


	2. attraction

The day before Valentine’s Day is just as awkward as its lead-up promised.

Pink paper hearts litter the campus, the classrooms, even the closed-in safety of the Haus; all the excitable freshmen are on the tips of their toes about Valentine’s Day, and Chowder’s enthusiastic decorating has swarmed through the Haus and disappeared out the front door long before anyone wakes up. And it’s not like either half of Ransom & Holster slept well that night, to begin with; by the time Ransom drags himself out of his ‘sleep’ that leaves him feeling more like it was a ‘nap,’ Holster is gone, a first for the year and a half they’d been living together.

Waking up to the emptiness of their attic is new.

Ransom doesn’t like it.

A knock at the door is all that keeps him from staring at Holster’s neatly categorized _30 Rock_ and _Parks and Recreation_ collection all day; it’s Bitty who gently propels an exhausted Ransom through the chaos of hearts to help him get to class on time. Holster’s conspicuous absence had apparently taken place before the rest of the Haus was alive for the day, and there’s silence as Bitty guides the exhausted defenseman through the second floor and into the entryway.

“Take a muffin,” he instructs, depositing a bag of at least six into Ransom’s arms. “Go to class, sit in the library for a while, get out there and do some thinking.”

Bitty’s smile is stern but not unkind, and he pinches Ransom’s cheek before he disappears back into the kitchen to summon the rest of the Haus with breakfast.

“I could kiss you, bro,” Ransom calls around a biteful of muffin. He doesn’t even think about it, hears the words as they’re coming out of his mouth, and nearly chokes. Is that really what he’s going to think of when he tells his team how much he loves them now?

A surprised laugh echoes back from the other room before he can think too much about it.

“Figure out if you want to first, _goodness_ ,” Bitty replies, his voice warm and teasing in a way that doesn’t feel patronizing. The delivery sounds a little stilted, like Bitty’s not any more used to making jokes about kissing his teammates than Ransom is to hearing them, but the mutual sense of fumbling sets Ransom a little bit more at ease.

So he leaves the Haus smiling, thinking, and eats a muffin.

He goes to class, still thinking, and eats another muffin.

Another in the library, and then the fourth muffin vanishes on his way to the lawn, before the fifth one gets devoured while he’s stretched out on the grass.

Ransom doesn’t see the note from Bitty until the sixth is a wreck of blueberry scraps and crumbs.

_LGBTQ Support Group meeting tonight at Neilsen Hall, room 393!_

_Come ask questions if you want, everyone is sweet as sugar and they’d all love to meet you!_

_Signed,_

_Eric Bittle (obviously)_

By the time he gets to Neilsen Hall, still unsure if he’s actually going to walk in, the meeting is over and everyone’s filing out. Ransom spots Bitty, chatting up two tall girls in high heels that look like they can’t keep their hands off each other, and makes a beeline for him with the nervous energy of someone totally out of their depth.

Thankfully, Bitty sees him coming and waves to the girls, walking to meet Ransom with a nervous smile.

“I didn’t get the note until just now,” Ransom says before Bitty can even open his mouth, “Sorry, bro, I was — I don’t know if I was going to go in, but I’m here, shit, this is so awkward.”

Bitty laughs.

“It’s always awkward for all of us,” he tells Ransom. “And believe you me, I don’t know how to talk about this any more than you do. Everyone in there is so outspoken, and I’m just a wallflower.”

“You play hockey,” Ransom says.

He gets a snort in response, and nervous that somehow he’s said the wrong thing, he falls silent. Without Holster to fall back on, he feels weirdly out of his depth, and he doesn’t want to piss off Bitty while he’s at it. That’d be like pissing off your only child in a divorce, and shit, Ransom realizes, he’s just compared himself and Holster to a married couple.

Better not to dwell on it.

But there is a question he wants to ask. And really, Bitty’s the only one he can spring that question on, the only one who could give him the data to conclude any kind of answer at all.

After a detour to grab a cup of coffee, Ransom works up the nerve and bursts through the mounting anxiety.

“So like… You wanna fuck guys.”

Bitty jolts at Ransom’s statement, something in his wide eyes instinctively fearful and simultaneously trusting that his friend won’t intentionally say something to hurt him.

“I told both of y’all that already,” he says, buttoned-up coat with his tense posture suddenly reminding Ransom of a startled owl. “And that I wanted to date them. You and — _you_ set me up on all those blind dates.”

A sudden realization dawns on Bitty’s face as Ransom struggles with phrasing what he wants to ask next, and with _entirely_ too much aerobic grace, Bitty spins on his heel to twirl himself directly in front of Ransom. Perfectly naturally, perfectly easily, perfectly sternly.

At that, Ransom pauses.

“I’m laying down the law,” Bitty informs him, only a little bit of an awkward tremble to his voice. The determination is apparent to anyone who’s passing by; Bitty’s hands are clenched and his brow is furrowed, even though he’s still vibrating with the vague Southern shyness from years of being quiet about what he wanted.

Ransom thinks that he’d be so proud if Bitty wasn’t currently lecturing him with all the puffed-up rage of a wet cat. He’ll save the pride for later, he thinks.

“No more setting me up on dates with art majors that have bad breath and are godawful at knowing how to use their hands until you and Holster work out your — _thing_ , and I swear to the Lord, if you try I’ll be real mad!” Apparently forgetting that Ransom isn’t made of glass despite whatever his emotions have been doing all morning, Bitty taps him delicately on the chest in the faintest imitation of an angry jab.

Ransom nods.

“I swear not to question the sex life of Eric Bittle,” he says, in his best impression of Jack on a particularly bad losing streak.

The faintest shadows of a grin appear on Bitty’s face and grow until he’s laughing, snorts completely overtaking him as he doubles over, laughing freely and openly in the middle of the Samwell University lawn. Ransom can’t help but laugh with him; it’s ridiculous, two hockey players snorting and wheezing for at least five minutes over an imitation of their hardworking captain, but it’s exactly what Ransom thinks he’s needed all day.

Then — because Ransom’s life is obviously, _obviously_ just like one of Holster’s ridiculous fauxumentaries where everyone keeps staring at the film crew and all the characters don’t know what they’re doing — someone taps Ransom on the shoulder.

“I need to talk to you,” Jack says, before Ransom even turns. “Right now.”


	3. queerplatonic

There’s something to be said for knowing the schedule of someone you’re trying to avoid like the back of your hand.

Holster bursts out of the Haus in the early morning, intent on puzzling things through by himself. The paper hearts and pink streamers don’t do anything to help his mood, especially when a neon red spider lands on his face on his way out the door. He’s frustrated, angry, and trying to think as he wanders into his first period class alone.

He’s also a little hurt that Ransom wouldn’t talk to him last night.

(And for Holster, _a little_ roughly equates to _I finally understand how Turk felt when J.D. left and their friendship changed forever_.)

Class speeds by faster than he thought he could be aware of, but he doesn’t remember any of it; when it’s over, he realizes Ransom is still in class, and darts back to the Haus to grab some DVDs and his laptop to hole up in the library. He figures the Haus has to be completely empty at this time of day, and plans to get in and get out without making any contact. Ransom probably needed space, and Holster also figures that having some space and time to himself is what he needs right now.

Instead, what he gets is distressed voices floating down to him as he makes his way up the stairs.

“It’s about the fuckin’ socially gendered assignment value in those terms?” Shitty is saying, with faint traces of agitation, when Holster reaches the second floor. Ey hasn’t noticed Holster yet despite facing his way; both hands are occupied holding and carefully measuring strands of Lardo’s short, short hair, scissors discarded in eir attempt to figure out exactly how haircuts _worked_ and brain occupied with something Holster knows he probably wouldn’t understand if he asked.

Lardo, for her part, cocks an eyebrow as soon as the top step creaks. Nothing gets past Lardo Duan, and Holster’s half-sure she would know exactly why he’s creeping around the Haus like a creepy serial murderer even if she hadn’t been there for the Incident last night.

Cursing darkly at a particularly stubborn lock of Lardo’s hair, Shitty continues, “And people are still gonna assume all kinds of motherfuckin’ _shit_ that isn’t any of their business, so it makes me —”

“Topic for the next group meeting,” Lardo interrupts. “Need something, Holtz?”

The Haus creaks with its emptiness, and the familiar sounds of his old, rotting home gives Holster the courage to ask the question he and Ransom had debated for months on end without ever reaching an answer.

“Why aren’t you two dating?”

Shitty chokes on a _fuckin’ what_ — then recovers, eyes wide and startled, like ey’d never expected to hear that question, out of all things Holster could have shown up out of the blue to ask. But it’s Lardo’s measured calm that grounds his response, her eyes thoughtful.

“We don’t want to,” she answers.

“Why not?” Holster presses. He’s vaguely aware he’s being about as pushy as Liz Lemon on one of her bad days, the days that make for great episodes but probably make her an awkward friend, and regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth.

The regret’s not for nothing, if the way Shitty and Lardo are eyeing each other is any indication. Holster realizes they don’t look like their whole world is different, not like he and Ransom had, not like his invasive probing is something that’s opened an old, old sealed box of conversation topics they’d like to ignore.

It’s just a dick move that made his friends uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling sorta like he ducked out of one painfully bright spotlight and directly into an even brighter one. “Sorry, that wasn’t cool.”

“It wasn’t cool at all, brah, gotta work on that,” Shitty agrees, some of the tension seeping out of eir shoulders at the apology while Lardo’s easy smile returns. Neither of them look like they’d been expecting an apology, which makes Holster feel even more like a dickbag about having to give one, and he certainly doesn’t expect either of them to actually answer him at this point.

But they do, because (Holster is pretty sure) he’s living with literal angels.

“It’s like your thing with Bitty,” Lardo tells him, fond in her familiarity. “You don’t wanna all-strings-attached hook up with him, ch’yeah?”

Holster gives it actual thought. Bitty isn’t someone he would hate to have slept with, if the situation happened, and in his privately rehearsed and rehashed _Parks and Rec_ jokes about his own life, Bitty was usually the ‘It Happened Once In A Dream’ to Holster’s ‘Eagle One’. It’s not like Holster’s ever considered himself above admitting the people on his team are _smokin_ ’, especially the ones he hangs out with constantly.

At the same time, though, a serious interest in Bitty just isn’t there.

“I don’t,” he admits.

“What about Rans?” Shitty asks.

And there’s the inevitable question, the one he’d been grappling with that had totally blown his idea of things acceptable to ask your friends out of the water. Holster thinks, takes a breath, thinks some more, presses his hands to his face.

“I don’t _know_ ,” he says. The words come out louder than intended, almost a shout with the weight of his stress.

Because, he admits miserably to himself, he doesn’t know what he wants.

"Look, bro, this is going to sound real 1980s sitcom cheesy, but you and Rans are whatever you want to be," Shitty informs him. "Take it from us."

“Really cheesy.” Her smile as big as he’s ever seen it, Lardo elbows Holster, not bothering to be gentle. “But listen to em. Shitty knows what ey’s talking about.”

Holster bites his lip, thinking.

And then the downstairs door swings open.


	4. romance

Jack Zimmerman bursts in the door of the Haus with a bright pink bug- and Valentines-themed monstrosity of a headband on his head and a fistful of Ransom’s arm in his grasp, intent on solving whatever problems he could, as easily as he could. And communication was clearly their problem; they could pretend that their relationship was a delicate ecosystem all they wanted, but if someone had to give them a shove that helped that ecosystem evolve, Jack would do it.

“ _Holster_ ,” he calls, his rare, seldom-heard yell ringing out. “I need to talk to you!”

It only takes a few seconds before Holster rushes down, looking guilty without even knowing why Jack was calling for him, and the blurs that are Lardo and Shitty slip by with a quick wave to the group and an idle toggle of Jack’s artificial antenna.

The door slips behind them with a click.

“When you voted me in, I said I had your backs no matter what,” Jack tells Ransom and Holster, pacing the length of the kitchen, his eyes as intense as they are on the ice. “And you two are some of the best players I’ve ever worked with. What can I do to help you get back together?”

Had he been anyone else, it would have almost been hard to take Jack seriously, a solidly stern captain in dangling pink bug antennae that he apparently didn’t care about removing any time soon; but Jack was staring at them with the same kind of thoughtful attention he gave any of his players who were struggling, anywhere, a genuine compassion to make them fix what they had.

Because he thought it was valuable, because he thought the two of them together were worth something worth fighting for, even if it meant dragging them into the same room and sitting them down himself to make them accept that.

Ransom and Holster finally glance at each other.

Both raise their eyebrows.

“ _Mario Kart_ night,” they say in unison.

So the Haus gathers back up as they all file in from a series of alarmist text messages, groaning about another night of _Mario Kart_ and each arrival distinctly not commenting on the way Ransom and Holster seem to tentatively be back in each others’ orbits.

It’s the same as the night before, and the night before that, with screaming and laughter and a belated invitation to the rest of the hockey team and even the women’s volleyball team for a larger all-night tourney that turns into April and March wiping the floor with everyone in team-based rounds but Nursey proving himself as the solo champ of having way too much practice on Rainbow Road.

Only tonight, when Ransom and Holster brush up against each other, they both bump themselves into it. They grin. They team up, one round after another, their jeering getting steadily louder and steadily more coordinated, and everything feels like a last piece of the puzzle has slid into place.

Afterwards, back in their attic and sitting across from each other on the floor, Ransom and Holster finally talk.

And talk.

And talk.

Eventually, they stand up, leaning against each other like they’re magnets who finally found the same attraction, and they find the whiteboard in the living room.

Ransom raises a finger and wipes that fateful _b_ clean off of the _bromance_.

And the ghosts grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you all enjoyed reading! To clear it up for anyone who might be wondering, the pronouns used to refer to the wonderful #42 in this fic are the Elverson set you can view in [this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun), again, that I linked to at the start of the fic. If you have any questions about the real-world use of those pronouns or any of the other ones on the Spivak chart, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message! 
> 
> For the record, because I take _Parks and Recreation_ jokes too seriously, here’s the rough draft I came up with: Holster is ‘Eagle One’, April and/or March is ‘Been There, Done That’, Ransom is ‘Currently Doing That’, Bitty is ‘It Happened Once In A Dream’, Lardo is ‘If I Had To Pick An Art Student’, and Jack is ‘Eagle Two’ (and yea, Jack rejoiced, for he was safe upon this day).
> 
> (And if you'll excuse me, nobody informed me that "Bromance to Romance" was a real tag here on AO3, so I'm going to dive in head-first. Have a great day, everyone!)


End file.
